Last night I had a dream about tea. I recently published a page on Cazort.net outlining my philosophy of dream interpretation, and in the spirit of this page, I will share an interpretation. The setting of this dream is a place you can visit if you come to World Tea East, as it is right around the corner from the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
The Dream:
I was at an underground supermarket in Chinatown in Philadelphia, one that actually exists, under the building on the SE corner of 11th and Race, and I was buying tea there. In real life, I'm not crazy about this store's tea selection, and there is another store in Chinatown that I prefer for buying tea (across Race street), but in the dream, I was finding a lot of long jing (dragon well) green tea that I liked.
I suspect that the reason for the dragon well tea in the dream is that I've recently sampled two of these teas from TeaVivre, so I have been thinking about this type of tea. If you're curious, you can find my Review of TeaVivre's Organic Superfine Dragon Well, along with my Review of TeaVivre's Superfine Pre-Ming Dragon Well.
Back to the dream...in the dream I noticed some dragon well that looked very good in quality (it was a brand that I trusted) and was low in price, but when I put it in my shopping basket, I noticed that it was not loose-leaf tea, but rather, K-cups for a Keurig coffee maker. Frustrated, I put them back on the shelf and was looking through the boxes on the shelf to find actual loose-leaf tea instead of processed tea in a K-cup. There were few boxes of loose-leaf tea, but I found some.
My interpretation of this dream:
I suspect that the reason for the appearance of K-cups in this dream is that I have been reading about tea packaged in K-cups recently, and that I am not a fan of this idea, and have been considering writing a post on this topic. But, as I have yet to write the post, it looks like my subconscious created a story about them first.
In some ways I think this dream is symbolic of my struggle to promote loose-leaf tea, and food culture in general, and the way I often feel overwhelmed by a sea of consumerism, in which the products that I am working to move people beyond, still seem to be the dominant ones in society. K-cups seem to symbolize processed foods for me, as they're more processed than even tea bags, and they represent an even farther move away from brewing your own tea, and towards instant brewing, convenience at the cost of quality and sustainability.
Do you ever dream about tea?
Do you ever dream about tea? What do you think of my dream? Do you share my loathing of Keurig and K-cups?
Showing posts with label supermarkets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label supermarkets. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
Tea Bag Buddy, and on Selling Tea Infusers in a Supermarket
Lately I've been on a supermarket kick, exploring the selection of tea and teaware for sale in various supermarkets. Here is a picture I took in a Stop and Shop supermarket in North Adams, MA:
This product, highlighted in a special hanging display clipped in front of the shelves in the aisle with the tea, is Primula's Tea Bag Buddy. In this post, I am not going to comment at all on this product itself, as it is one that I have little interest in as a loose tea enthusiast. Rather, I'm going to propose an alternative of a product that could be sold in a similar location in supermarkets.
I find the product placement of the tea bag buddy in the aisle with the tea to be interesting, as it shows that people are already selling tea accessories alongside the tea itself. This is important because it highlights a method that could be used to enable supermarkets to sell loose-leaf tea to an audience of tea bag drinkers, not accustomed to drinking loose tea.
Instead of the tea bag buddy or a similar product, the store could sell tea infusers, in the same location, clipped to a prominent hanging display. If I were running a store, I would choose to carry Finum Permanent Tea Filters. I would price them at cost, with the idea that the item was included only for convenience, not profit, and the product would encourage shoppers to purchase loose-leaf tea.
Then, I would carry a modest selection of loose-leaf tea. I would draw attention to the price-per-cup and number of cups in the loose tea, because people unaccustomed to preparing tea from loose leaf tend not to have a good sense of these things. It would make the product more accessible and appealing. Here is a marketing idea:
I chose Twinings as an example of a tea to show, because I have found Twinings to be the loose tea most frequently available in supermarkets in the U.S., and in many cases, the only loose-leaf tea avaliable.
Of course, Twinings or other tea companies could probably come up with much more attractive-looking specials. Even if the tea companies selling loose tea do not change anything about their packaging to draw attention to the number of cups of tea in the container, or the cost-per-cup, the supermarket or store selling the tea can do this themselves, perhaps in a special display, label, or sign. Most supermarkets already place a price-per-count on the price tag for various products. The label shown here is for Bigelow tea bags, and shows a unit price per 100 count:
Such labels would immediately show the clear lower price per cup of loose-leaf tea. With the extremely generous serving of 2.5 grams per cup (much more than most tea bags), Twinings loose-leaf tea, which usually sells for around $4 for the container shown above, would be much cheaper than all but the most bargain-priced teas. And there are numerous brands selling lower-priced loose-leaf tea as well.
Do you think that a display highlighting a small selection of loose-leaf tea, with a few low-priced, high-quality tea infusers clipped to hang prominently in the aisle in front of them, would get people's attention and draw some new people in to switch to loose-leaf tea? Do you think this sort of setup could be financially viable, or even possibly lucrative, for a supermarket?
This product, highlighted in a special hanging display clipped in front of the shelves in the aisle with the tea, is Primula's Tea Bag Buddy. In this post, I am not going to comment at all on this product itself, as it is one that I have little interest in as a loose tea enthusiast. Rather, I'm going to propose an alternative of a product that could be sold in a similar location in supermarkets.
Selling tea infusers and loose-leaf tea in a supermarket?
I find the product placement of the tea bag buddy in the aisle with the tea to be interesting, as it shows that people are already selling tea accessories alongside the tea itself. This is important because it highlights a method that could be used to enable supermarkets to sell loose-leaf tea to an audience of tea bag drinkers, not accustomed to drinking loose tea.
Instead of the tea bag buddy or a similar product, the store could sell tea infusers, in the same location, clipped to a prominent hanging display. If I were running a store, I would choose to carry Finum Permanent Tea Filters. I would price them at cost, with the idea that the item was included only for convenience, not profit, and the product would encourage shoppers to purchase loose-leaf tea.
Then, I would carry a modest selection of loose-leaf tea. I would draw attention to the price-per-cup and number of cups in the loose tea, because people unaccustomed to preparing tea from loose leaf tend not to have a good sense of these things. It would make the product more accessible and appealing. Here is a marketing idea:
I chose Twinings as an example of a tea to show, because I have found Twinings to be the loose tea most frequently available in supermarkets in the U.S., and in many cases, the only loose-leaf tea avaliable.
Of course, Twinings or other tea companies could probably come up with much more attractive-looking specials. Even if the tea companies selling loose tea do not change anything about their packaging to draw attention to the number of cups of tea in the container, or the cost-per-cup, the supermarket or store selling the tea can do this themselves, perhaps in a special display, label, or sign. Most supermarkets already place a price-per-count on the price tag for various products. The label shown here is for Bigelow tea bags, and shows a unit price per 100 count:
Such labels would immediately show the clear lower price per cup of loose-leaf tea. With the extremely generous serving of 2.5 grams per cup (much more than most tea bags), Twinings loose-leaf tea, which usually sells for around $4 for the container shown above, would be much cheaper than all but the most bargain-priced teas. And there are numerous brands selling lower-priced loose-leaf tea as well.
What do you think?
Do you think that a display highlighting a small selection of loose-leaf tea, with a few low-priced, high-quality tea infusers clipped to hang prominently in the aisle in front of them, would get people's attention and draw some new people in to switch to loose-leaf tea? Do you think this sort of setup could be financially viable, or even possibly lucrative, for a supermarket?
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Packaged Loose-Leaf Tea in an Indian Store: Lipton Yellow Label, Brooke Bond, and More
Recently I wrote about a Lipton Tea display in the Supreme Shop n Bag grocery store in West Philadelphia. One block east of this store is a small Indian grocery store, officially called "International Foods and Spices", but known by most people in the neighborhood as "The Indian Store on Walnut", distinguishing it from a similar store one block away on Chestnut street. (I love multiculturalism!)
Unlike the supermarket, the Indian store sells primarily loose-leaf tea, although it also carries some tea bags. It was hard for me to take one photograph that shows the whole of this store's selection, because it was rather spread out, so here's just a brief snapshot that shows only a small part of it, but gives you a general idea:
Reflecting the heavy influence of British culture on India, particularly Indian tea culture, there are numerous British brands represented here. Yorkshire Tea, PG Tips, and Brooke Bond are all represented, but there are quite a few others. There is single-origin Darjeeling and Ceylon tea available as well. Most of the tea sold here is straight black tea.
Lipton Yellow Label tea amuses me slightly, since the mainstream, generic "black tea" marketed throughout the U.S. also has a yellow label, but it tends to never be explicitly named this way. For some reasons, Lipton Tea imported from outside the U.S. often bears this name explicitly.
I have yet to try this tea, so I can't say if it is the same as the tea sold in the tea bags in the U.S. or not. I have been told that it is higher-quality.
Brooke Bond is a particularly interesting brand to me. Most Americans do not know this, but Brooke Bond was originally a tea company of its own, and was the originator of the PG Tips brand. In time, the PG Tips brand soared to great popularity, and Brooke Bond's own brand of tea eventually fell out of popularity and was discontinued in most Western markets. Both brands are now owned by Unilever.
In many non-Western markets, however, including India and Pakistan, the Brooke Bond brand of tea is still not only strong but dominant. The Indian store mentioned above imports Brooke Bond tea, as it is not directly distributed in the U.S.
There is a lot more to be said about this particular store's tea selection, but I will save it for a later date.
Have you tried Brooke Bond tea? Have you tried the "Lipton Yellow Label" tea imported from outside the U.S.? For those of you overseas, in which locations is Lipton Yellow Label sold as such, and, have you had the opportunity to try it to see if it is the same blend sold in the U.S. or if it is a different tea entirely?
Unlike the supermarket, the Indian store sells primarily loose-leaf tea, although it also carries some tea bags. It was hard for me to take one photograph that shows the whole of this store's selection, because it was rather spread out, so here's just a brief snapshot that shows only a small part of it, but gives you a general idea:
Reflecting the heavy influence of British culture on India, particularly Indian tea culture, there are numerous British brands represented here. Yorkshire Tea, PG Tips, and Brooke Bond are all represented, but there are quite a few others. There is single-origin Darjeeling and Ceylon tea available as well. Most of the tea sold here is straight black tea.
Lipton Yellow Label:
Lipton Yellow Label tea amuses me slightly, since the mainstream, generic "black tea" marketed throughout the U.S. also has a yellow label, but it tends to never be explicitly named this way. For some reasons, Lipton Tea imported from outside the U.S. often bears this name explicitly.
I have yet to try this tea, so I can't say if it is the same as the tea sold in the tea bags in the U.S. or not. I have been told that it is higher-quality.
Brooke Bond:
Brooke Bond is a particularly interesting brand to me. Most Americans do not know this, but Brooke Bond was originally a tea company of its own, and was the originator of the PG Tips brand. In time, the PG Tips brand soared to great popularity, and Brooke Bond's own brand of tea eventually fell out of popularity and was discontinued in most Western markets. Both brands are now owned by Unilever.
In many non-Western markets, however, including India and Pakistan, the Brooke Bond brand of tea is still not only strong but dominant. The Indian store mentioned above imports Brooke Bond tea, as it is not directly distributed in the U.S.
More to be said later perhaps...
There is a lot more to be said about this particular store's tea selection, but I will save it for a later date.
Have you tried Brooke Bond tea? Have you tried the "Lipton Yellow Label" tea imported from outside the U.S.? For those of you overseas, in which locations is Lipton Yellow Label sold as such, and, have you had the opportunity to try it to see if it is the same blend sold in the U.S. or if it is a different tea entirely?
Monday, August 6, 2012
Lipton Tea Supermarket Display
I'm continuously interested in tea in American supermarkets, mainly because supermarkets are a place of the mainstream, and what is going on in mainstream supermarkets says a lot about the reach of tea culture in the U.S.
Pictured here is a supermarket display from the Supreme Shop n Bag store, part of Thriftway Shop n Bag stores, located on Walnut St. in Philadelphia, between 43rd and 44th streets:
This is a large, attention-getting display, out in the middle of the aisle. It's hard to miss. Yet I find it disappointed me; the display got my attention, but in the end, was rather boring.
Missed business opportunity? Why not highlight more products?
This display takes up a lot of space, yet it only includes a single product. Judging by how full the display is, the display does not seem to be doing a great job of encouraging people to buy tea.
Lipton tea, although it is known for its basic black tea, has diversified a lot lately, and now offers herbal blends, flavored teas, and higher-quality tea offered in pyramid sachets. You can visit the Lipton tea page on RateTea if you want to check what products Lipton carries, or read some reviews; I've personally reviewed 10 different offerings from Lipton. The company also sells loose-leaf tea. This display doesn't highlight any of these products!
I don't know if Lipton chose everything about this display, or if it was more up to the supermarket, but, regardless of who made the decision, I think Lipton is missing an opportunity to highlight the diversity of its products.
What do you think?
Do you think Lipton is missing an opportunity here? Or do you think people really just want a discount on their basic black tea? Or is Lipton tea off your radar entirely?
Pictured here is a supermarket display from the Supreme Shop n Bag store, part of Thriftway Shop n Bag stores, located on Walnut St. in Philadelphia, between 43rd and 44th streets:
This is a large, attention-getting display, out in the middle of the aisle. It's hard to miss. Yet I find it disappointed me; the display got my attention, but in the end, was rather boring.
Missed business opportunity? Why not highlight more products?
This display takes up a lot of space, yet it only includes a single product. Judging by how full the display is, the display does not seem to be doing a great job of encouraging people to buy tea.
Lipton tea, although it is known for its basic black tea, has diversified a lot lately, and now offers herbal blends, flavored teas, and higher-quality tea offered in pyramid sachets. You can visit the Lipton tea page on RateTea if you want to check what products Lipton carries, or read some reviews; I've personally reviewed 10 different offerings from Lipton. The company also sells loose-leaf tea. This display doesn't highlight any of these products!
I don't know if Lipton chose everything about this display, or if it was more up to the supermarket, but, regardless of who made the decision, I think Lipton is missing an opportunity to highlight the diversity of its products.
What do you think?
Do you think Lipton is missing an opportunity here? Or do you think people really just want a discount on their basic black tea? Or is Lipton tea off your radar entirely?
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Frontier Co-op - A Leader In Sustainability
Today's post is the second post inspired by my visit to Mariposa Food Co-op in West Philadelphia. In the first post, I wrote about the tea bag selection in the co-op. This post focuses the company that provides the loose-leaf teas and bulk herbs in the same store: Frontier Co-op:
This station doubles as a showcase or display for the herbs and tea, and a self-serve station where people can fill their own bags of herbs. Although the jars are glass jars, which are not ideal because they allow for some break-down of the herbs with light, the display was located in a dark back corner of the store, minimizing the negative effects of the light.
Pictured here are the implements for filling bags, which include scoops and funnels:
Self-serve setups like this are relatively common in natural food stores and co-ops across the country. There is a lot that I like about these sort of self-serve displays. In particular:
What I like about Frontier Co-Op:
First, before I go into depth about what I like about Co-op, I want to point out that the company not only sells loose-leaf tea and bulk herbs in stores, but also through their website:
Some of the things I like most about Frontier Co-op:
I hope that individuals reading this post can have the opportunity to try out Frontier Co-op's herbs, spices, and teas, if they have not already done so. And I hope that people working within the tea industry can look into the various things Frontier is doing to promote sustainability, and can get some good ideas and inspiration. I am hopeful that relatively soon, many of the practices that Frontier is spearheading will become the norm.
What do you think?
Have you tried the teas from Frontier Co-op? How about their herbs and spices? And what do you think about what they are doing to promote sustainability? What do you think of the co-operative model in general? And, for those who work within the tea industry, do you have any plans to implement any of the practices that Frontier has been engaging in in terms of sustainable sourcing, operations, or transparency?
This station doubles as a showcase or display for the herbs and tea, and a self-serve station where people can fill their own bags of herbs. Although the jars are glass jars, which are not ideal because they allow for some break-down of the herbs with light, the display was located in a dark back corner of the store, minimizing the negative effects of the light.
Pictured here are the implements for filling bags, which include scoops and funnels:
Self-serve setups like this are relatively common in natural food stores and co-ops across the country. There is a lot that I like about these sort of self-serve displays. In particular:
- These displays can offer a large selection of herbs and/or tea while taking up minimal space. The space taken up by the display is smaller than that taken up by many supermarkets' packaged tea bag selections.
- The small size of the jars allows for high turnover of the jars' contents, ensuring freshness.
- The self-service station keeps costs down, enabling customers to purchase tea and herbs for a reasonable price, while the store can still make a comfortable profit, without needing to expend employee time for measuring and serving herbs.
- Allowing people to measure out their own herbs and tea enables people to buy the exact quantity they want. This is convenient both for very small sizes (such as for sampling loose-leaf tea, or buying infrequently-used spices) or very large sizes (such as for someone like me, who goes through ground coriander faster than most households use salt or sugar). Most supermarkets offer only fixed sizes of herbs and spices, which are often either too small or too large for people's needs.
What I like about Frontier Co-Op:
First, before I go into depth about what I like about Co-op, I want to point out that the company not only sells loose-leaf tea and bulk herbs in stores, but also through their website:
Some of the things I like most about Frontier Co-op:
- Frontier is organized as a cooperative, wholly owned by its wholesale customers, many of which are in turn cooperatives, like Mariposa co-op, owned by individual people. The co-op model has a number of compelling advantages over other models of ownership; the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) has a website that explains this model of business ownership in depth.
- Through its displays in retail stores, Frontier makes a wide selection of herbs available that are not widely available in stores in the U.S., and it also sells loose-leaf orthodox teas of decent quality, which, unfortunately do not tend to be widely available in the U.S. either.
- Frontier Co-op is strongly committed to sustainability, and is a definitive leader in this area, going above and beyond even what many of the more environmentally- and ethically-conscious tea companies are doing. There is so much that this organization is doing to promote sustainability that it is not possible to cover it all here; if you want to read more, I'd invite you to read the sustainability section on Frontier's site. Frontier publishes an annual sustainability report, and has a tangible pathway towards achieving certain goals, with measurable milestones. They also have a great deal more transparency than is the norm in the tea industry. Perhaps some other tea companies can get some good ideas and inspiration in here!
- The quality of the bulk herbs is top-notch, and the teas are not bad. Although Frontier unfortunately does not sell what I would consider to be true artisan tea (single-harvest, single-estate teas), they sell a number of single-region orthodox teas of reasonable quality. And their prices are much lower than the prices on similar teas. The low prices, including on products that are both organic and fair trade certified, sold from a company that has gone above and beyond in the area of sustainability, provide proof that tea companies can deliver sustainably-sourced products at low cost. I have tried a few of Frontier's teas, and while they did not wow me as being otherworldly, they were solidly good. You can find reviews of the few teas I've sampled on RateTea's page on Frontier.
I hope that individuals reading this post can have the opportunity to try out Frontier Co-op's herbs, spices, and teas, if they have not already done so. And I hope that people working within the tea industry can look into the various things Frontier is doing to promote sustainability, and can get some good ideas and inspiration. I am hopeful that relatively soon, many of the practices that Frontier is spearheading will become the norm.
What do you think?
Have you tried the teas from Frontier Co-op? How about their herbs and spices? And what do you think about what they are doing to promote sustainability? What do you think of the co-operative model in general? And, for those who work within the tea industry, do you have any plans to implement any of the practices that Frontier has been engaging in in terms of sustainable sourcing, operations, or transparency?
Friday, July 13, 2012
Green Tea Soap from Trader Joe's
Back in January, I wrote about the tea selection in Trader Joe's. Today, I want to highlight a completely different tea-related product from this company. This is the green tea soap sold in Trader Joe's:
I do not know the exact composition of this soap, but the label claims it is 100% vegetable based (a matter of concern for vegans), and contains shea butter, one of my favorite plant-based oils, and a great moisturizer in its own right.
I'm normally not a huge fan of most packaged bar soaps widely available in supermarkets and drug stores. Many of them smell a bit too much like synthetic chemicals to me, and some of them I find to be harsh on my skin. I rarely find bar soap sold in one of these stores that I like and become a fan of, and this particular one is one exception. This is the only widely available commercial soap (as opposed to artisan soaps created and/or sold by small, local businesses) that I've tried that I would recommend.
What do I like about this soap?
There is a lot about this soap that I like. It smells wonderful, pleasantly aromatic but mild and suggesting sweetness. Its aroma reminds me of some of the higher quality Chinese green teas, ever-so-slightly suggesting floral aromas. It is also quite inexpensive, at $3.29 for a 200mg bar. And, I find it mild on my skin. The soap is soft enough to cut easily when slightly warmer than room temperature, which I like because it is quite a large bar, and I find that cutting it into 3 or 4 smaller bars makes it more convenient and helps one bar to go a little farther.
Interestingly, Trader Joe's also sells a similar soap with a lemon verbena fragrance, and another that is lavender-scented. I find it notable that both of these herbs are frequent ingredients in herbal teas. Interestingly, although I love lemon verbena as an herbal tea, I found their lemon verbena soap a bit harsh; not only did I not like the smell as much, but I found it was not quite as easy on my skin as the green tea soap.
What do you think?
Have you tried this particular soap? Have you tried other soaps or personal care products which are scented with green tea? Have you ever tried the trick of cutting large bars of soap into smaller bars, in order to conserve resources?
I do not know the exact composition of this soap, but the label claims it is 100% vegetable based (a matter of concern for vegans), and contains shea butter, one of my favorite plant-based oils, and a great moisturizer in its own right.
I'm normally not a huge fan of most packaged bar soaps widely available in supermarkets and drug stores. Many of them smell a bit too much like synthetic chemicals to me, and some of them I find to be harsh on my skin. I rarely find bar soap sold in one of these stores that I like and become a fan of, and this particular one is one exception. This is the only widely available commercial soap (as opposed to artisan soaps created and/or sold by small, local businesses) that I've tried that I would recommend.
What do I like about this soap?
There is a lot about this soap that I like. It smells wonderful, pleasantly aromatic but mild and suggesting sweetness. Its aroma reminds me of some of the higher quality Chinese green teas, ever-so-slightly suggesting floral aromas. It is also quite inexpensive, at $3.29 for a 200mg bar. And, I find it mild on my skin. The soap is soft enough to cut easily when slightly warmer than room temperature, which I like because it is quite a large bar, and I find that cutting it into 3 or 4 smaller bars makes it more convenient and helps one bar to go a little farther.
Interestingly, Trader Joe's also sells a similar soap with a lemon verbena fragrance, and another that is lavender-scented. I find it notable that both of these herbs are frequent ingredients in herbal teas. Interestingly, although I love lemon verbena as an herbal tea, I found their lemon verbena soap a bit harsh; not only did I not like the smell as much, but I found it was not quite as easy on my skin as the green tea soap.
What do you think?
Have you tried this particular soap? Have you tried other soaps or personal care products which are scented with green tea? Have you ever tried the trick of cutting large bars of soap into smaller bars, in order to conserve resources?
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Tea Bag Selection in Mariposa Co-Op, and Tea Bags and Sustainability
This is the first of at least two posts on the topic of Mariposa Food Co-op. Mariposa has been in operation for quite some time, in West Philadelphia, but it recently moved into a large, new storefront on Baltimore Avenue, near 49th street. At the same time, the co-op opened up its store to the general public; in the past, they only allowed members to shop there.
I am interested in Mariposa for a variety of reasons. One of them is that, like many cooperatives, it is run by consensus. I am particularly interested in consensus as my friends and I have recently founded a new religious group, called Why This Way, which is run by consensus. But in this post, I want to write not about the co-op itself, but about its selection of tea bags:
This photo looks remarkably similar to a photo I took recently in a Whole Foods supermarket, and have yet to post, but hope to post in the near future.
The brands represented here include brands specializing in organic tea bags, such as Eden Organic, Choice Organic Teas, and Organic India, as well as mainstream tea bag brands, such as Twinings and Celestial Seasonings. Another brand, Traditional Medicinals, focusing on medicinal herbs, I find is a frequently-stocked product in co-ops and health food stores. Yogi Teas also has a good presence, and Good Earth's flagship tea also makes an appearance.
This store also sells bulk loose-leaf tea, something I'm quite excited about, and which I will cover in a future post. The bottom shelf, not pictured, did include two loose-leaf items: Ajiri Tea, a Kenyan black tea that I would highly recommend and that has favorable reviews on RateTea, and loose-leaf Yerba Mate from EcoTeas.
How do I feel about this tea bag selection?
To be honest, I am not excited by the selection here. The prices seem high to me, running from about $3.50 to $5.00 for a box of about 20 tea bags, with most brands centering around the 4.70-4.80 price range. That seems a lot to pay for a box of tea bags, especially when the same store sells bulk herbs and loose-leaf teas, which are, in my opinion, considerably higher in quality, and which are much cheaper per cup.
I also feel a bit ambivalent about the "eco-friendly" brands of tea bags, like Eden Organics and Choice Organic Teas. I care a lot about sustainability. I think organic agriculture is a good idea, and, all other things being equal, I would not only prefer organic certified tea but may even pay a slight premium for it. But I also think that there are other issues to consider when considering environment impact.
These products are all highly packaged...boxed, most shrink-wrapped, and containing individually-packaged tea bags. Not all the packaging is biodegradable. A few of the products are fair-trade certified, but, as I explored in my recent guest post on Journey for Fair Trade about fair trade and the tea industry, the "value-added" processes like tea bag packaging results in profit that tends to be taken by Western countries, not a higher price paid to the original producers. And, also relating to the portion of profits going to producers vs. blenders and packers, few, if any, of these boxed products contain high-grade, whole-leaf tea.
It seems a little misguided to me that people are paying such a premium ($4.80 seems like a lot of money to me) for a box of tea bags with the idea that it is "eco-friendly" because it is organic certified, when the whole act of buying tea bags rather than loose-leaf tea has environmental and economic impacts that most of the people who value organic tea would consider negative. I almost wish the Co-op could just put a giant sign in front of all these products with an arrow pointing over to their bulk herbs and loose-leaf teas, saying: "BUY AND DRINK LOOSE-LEAF TEA, IT IS WAY BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!", and of course, selling some convenient tea infusers to make the loose tea easily accessible to newcomers.
How about you? What do you think?
Do you think I'm coming down a bit too hard here on the practice of buying and drinking tea bags? Or do you agree with my points here, that it would be warranted to have a more aggressive push towards drinking loose-leaf tea, among an audience of shoppers concerned about the environment?
I am interested in Mariposa for a variety of reasons. One of them is that, like many cooperatives, it is run by consensus. I am particularly interested in consensus as my friends and I have recently founded a new religious group, called Why This Way, which is run by consensus. But in this post, I want to write not about the co-op itself, but about its selection of tea bags:
This photo looks remarkably similar to a photo I took recently in a Whole Foods supermarket, and have yet to post, but hope to post in the near future.
The brands represented here include brands specializing in organic tea bags, such as Eden Organic, Choice Organic Teas, and Organic India, as well as mainstream tea bag brands, such as Twinings and Celestial Seasonings. Another brand, Traditional Medicinals, focusing on medicinal herbs, I find is a frequently-stocked product in co-ops and health food stores. Yogi Teas also has a good presence, and Good Earth's flagship tea also makes an appearance.
This store also sells bulk loose-leaf tea, something I'm quite excited about, and which I will cover in a future post. The bottom shelf, not pictured, did include two loose-leaf items: Ajiri Tea, a Kenyan black tea that I would highly recommend and that has favorable reviews on RateTea, and loose-leaf Yerba Mate from EcoTeas.
How do I feel about this tea bag selection?
To be honest, I am not excited by the selection here. The prices seem high to me, running from about $3.50 to $5.00 for a box of about 20 tea bags, with most brands centering around the 4.70-4.80 price range. That seems a lot to pay for a box of tea bags, especially when the same store sells bulk herbs and loose-leaf teas, which are, in my opinion, considerably higher in quality, and which are much cheaper per cup.
I also feel a bit ambivalent about the "eco-friendly" brands of tea bags, like Eden Organics and Choice Organic Teas. I care a lot about sustainability. I think organic agriculture is a good idea, and, all other things being equal, I would not only prefer organic certified tea but may even pay a slight premium for it. But I also think that there are other issues to consider when considering environment impact.
These products are all highly packaged...boxed, most shrink-wrapped, and containing individually-packaged tea bags. Not all the packaging is biodegradable. A few of the products are fair-trade certified, but, as I explored in my recent guest post on Journey for Fair Trade about fair trade and the tea industry, the "value-added" processes like tea bag packaging results in profit that tends to be taken by Western countries, not a higher price paid to the original producers. And, also relating to the portion of profits going to producers vs. blenders and packers, few, if any, of these boxed products contain high-grade, whole-leaf tea.
It seems a little misguided to me that people are paying such a premium ($4.80 seems like a lot of money to me) for a box of tea bags with the idea that it is "eco-friendly" because it is organic certified, when the whole act of buying tea bags rather than loose-leaf tea has environmental and economic impacts that most of the people who value organic tea would consider negative. I almost wish the Co-op could just put a giant sign in front of all these products with an arrow pointing over to their bulk herbs and loose-leaf teas, saying: "BUY AND DRINK LOOSE-LEAF TEA, IT IS WAY BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!", and of course, selling some convenient tea infusers to make the loose tea easily accessible to newcomers.
How about you? What do you think?
Do you think I'm coming down a bit too hard here on the practice of buying and drinking tea bags? Or do you agree with my points here, that it would be warranted to have a more aggressive push towards drinking loose-leaf tea, among an audience of shoppers concerned about the environment?
Friday, June 1, 2012
Tea In A Puerto Rican Supermarket
The topic of tea selections in supermarkets is something that I'm very interested in. I've written about tea in supermarkets three times before, in the following posts:
In this post, I write about my observations about the teas for sale in a supermarket that I visited in Puerto Rico. I also write about what I think may be missed business opportunities related to the products I saw (and did not see) on the shelf.
The tea selection in a Puerto Rican Supermarket, Pueblo, near Ponce:
There were not as many supermarkets in Puerto Rico as I'm used to in the U.S. But once I actually saw the inside of a Puerto Rican supermarket, it was pretty similar to the U.S. But the tea selection was very small:
In a typical supermarket in the U.S., one about the same size as this one, Pueblo (which means "people"), the tea section usually does not fit in a single photograph. I'm used to having to take two or more photos to capture all the teas for sale. The selection in this supermarket not only fits in one photo, it does not even reach to the bottom of the shelf.
The only two mainstream brands I saw represented were Lipton and Celestial Seasonings. There were two hispanic-oriented brands: Carmencita, and Tadin Herb & Tea Co.
Neither Lipton nor Celestial Seasonings had Spanish-language packaging:
I found it particularly interesting that the packaging presented here by both Lipton and Celestial Seasonings was English-language only. This seems to me to be a business mistake. Most of the other products for sale in this supermarket, and all the signs in the supermarket, were Spanish-language only.
The store where the above photo was taken was located just outside of Ponce, on the south coast. Ponce is a good distance from San Juan, and, compared to San Juan and surrounding areas, is much less of a tourist destination for non-Puerto Rican Americans. (I say this because this area does seem a popular destination for people of Puerto Rican descent born in the states.) Whereas in San Juan, most people spoke English, many fluently, in Ponce, many people I encountered spoke no English at all, and the English skills of the people I ran into were noticeably poorer. Spanish was clearly the dominant language in this area.
If I were running a tea company here, I would offer bilingual packaging for sale everywhere in Puerto Rico. In the absence of bilingual packaging, I would offer Spanish-language-only packaging.
Puerto Rican brands not represented:
The two tea brands mentioned above, Carmencita, and Tadin, are both oriented towards a hispanic market, but neither are based in Puerto Rico. Carmencita is a Spanish company, based in Novelda, Spain. Tadin is a U.S. company, based in California, and oriented towards the US Hispanic market. I do not know about the cultural origins of Tadin, but I will say, I have frequently seen their herbs for sale in Mexican stores, so I suspect that it has a generic Hispanic orientation and may even be more oriented towards Mexicans. It's easy for non-hispanic Americans to think of "Hispanic culture" as monolithic, but my experience has been that there is surprisingly little overlap between the culinary traditions of Puerto Rico and Mexico. Puerto Rican cuisine seems to have as least as much in common with the food in Jamaica, an area not considered Hispanic. I know less about Puerto Ricans' taste in herbal teas, but I'd imagine these traditions could be equally different from each other as the food traditions are.
I do know of one brand of herbal teas with Puerto Rican heritage, Badia. Badia, a spice and herb company, is now based in Florida, but was founded in Puerto Rico when Jose Badia fled from Cuba after the revolution (you can read more about the Cuban revolution in my recent post if you missed it). Badia has some interesting offerings among herbal teas, including linden leaves, star anise, loose-leaf Eucalyptus, and Cat's claw (used in the traditional medicine of Peru).
My intuition is that Badia would be more successful in Puerto Rican supermarkets than any of the four brands sold here. Their offerings may fit more to Puerto Rican tastes, and, if some of their staff had roots in Puerto Rico, they'd be more likely to be able to develop an intuition for which products would work best there. And I also think many Puerto Ricans would gladly support a company with local origins, especially if Badia were to somehow draw attention to this fact.
A purely local Puerto Rican herbal tea company?
I also don't see why a purely-local company couldn't come into the picture here. Puerto Rico has a diverse climate and has the capacity to produce a wide variety of herbs locally. I think it would be great to see a locally-owned brand of locally-grown, locally-blended herbal teas in Puerto Rican supermarkets. And I think such a brand could be very successful. Puerto Ricans drink their locally-brewed beer, Medalla light, with great pride and enthusiasm. And I look at the English-only packaging of Lipton and Celestial Seasonings and I think...wow, these big companies are just spinning their wheels. There's a missed business opportunity here!
- Tea at Wegmans Supermarket - January, 2011.
- Trader Joe's Tea - And Commentary On The Chain As A Whole - January, 2012.
- Tea Selections of Supermarkets - October, 2010.
In this post, I write about my observations about the teas for sale in a supermarket that I visited in Puerto Rico. I also write about what I think may be missed business opportunities related to the products I saw (and did not see) on the shelf.
The tea selection in a Puerto Rican Supermarket, Pueblo, near Ponce:
There were not as many supermarkets in Puerto Rico as I'm used to in the U.S. But once I actually saw the inside of a Puerto Rican supermarket, it was pretty similar to the U.S. But the tea selection was very small:
In a typical supermarket in the U.S., one about the same size as this one, Pueblo (which means "people"), the tea section usually does not fit in a single photograph. I'm used to having to take two or more photos to capture all the teas for sale. The selection in this supermarket not only fits in one photo, it does not even reach to the bottom of the shelf.
The only two mainstream brands I saw represented were Lipton and Celestial Seasonings. There were two hispanic-oriented brands: Carmencita, and Tadin Herb & Tea Co.
Neither Lipton nor Celestial Seasonings had Spanish-language packaging:
I found it particularly interesting that the packaging presented here by both Lipton and Celestial Seasonings was English-language only. This seems to me to be a business mistake. Most of the other products for sale in this supermarket, and all the signs in the supermarket, were Spanish-language only.
The store where the above photo was taken was located just outside of Ponce, on the south coast. Ponce is a good distance from San Juan, and, compared to San Juan and surrounding areas, is much less of a tourist destination for non-Puerto Rican Americans. (I say this because this area does seem a popular destination for people of Puerto Rican descent born in the states.) Whereas in San Juan, most people spoke English, many fluently, in Ponce, many people I encountered spoke no English at all, and the English skills of the people I ran into were noticeably poorer. Spanish was clearly the dominant language in this area.
If I were running a tea company here, I would offer bilingual packaging for sale everywhere in Puerto Rico. In the absence of bilingual packaging, I would offer Spanish-language-only packaging.
Puerto Rican brands not represented:
The two tea brands mentioned above, Carmencita, and Tadin, are both oriented towards a hispanic market, but neither are based in Puerto Rico. Carmencita is a Spanish company, based in Novelda, Spain. Tadin is a U.S. company, based in California, and oriented towards the US Hispanic market. I do not know about the cultural origins of Tadin, but I will say, I have frequently seen their herbs for sale in Mexican stores, so I suspect that it has a generic Hispanic orientation and may even be more oriented towards Mexicans. It's easy for non-hispanic Americans to think of "Hispanic culture" as monolithic, but my experience has been that there is surprisingly little overlap between the culinary traditions of Puerto Rico and Mexico. Puerto Rican cuisine seems to have as least as much in common with the food in Jamaica, an area not considered Hispanic. I know less about Puerto Ricans' taste in herbal teas, but I'd imagine these traditions could be equally different from each other as the food traditions are.
I do know of one brand of herbal teas with Puerto Rican heritage, Badia. Badia, a spice and herb company, is now based in Florida, but was founded in Puerto Rico when Jose Badia fled from Cuba after the revolution (you can read more about the Cuban revolution in my recent post if you missed it). Badia has some interesting offerings among herbal teas, including linden leaves, star anise, loose-leaf Eucalyptus, and Cat's claw (used in the traditional medicine of Peru).
My intuition is that Badia would be more successful in Puerto Rican supermarkets than any of the four brands sold here. Their offerings may fit more to Puerto Rican tastes, and, if some of their staff had roots in Puerto Rico, they'd be more likely to be able to develop an intuition for which products would work best there. And I also think many Puerto Ricans would gladly support a company with local origins, especially if Badia were to somehow draw attention to this fact.
A purely local Puerto Rican herbal tea company?
I also don't see why a purely-local company couldn't come into the picture here. Puerto Rico has a diverse climate and has the capacity to produce a wide variety of herbs locally. I think it would be great to see a locally-owned brand of locally-grown, locally-blended herbal teas in Puerto Rican supermarkets. And I think such a brand could be very successful. Puerto Ricans drink their locally-brewed beer, Medalla light, with great pride and enthusiasm. And I look at the English-only packaging of Lipton and Celestial Seasonings and I think...wow, these big companies are just spinning their wheels. There's a missed business opportunity here!
Monday, January 30, 2012
Trader Joe's Tea - And Commentary On The Chain As A Whole
Some time ago I wrote a long post about Tea at Wegmans Supermarket, which I followed up on by reviewing nine of Wemgans' Teas and herbal teas on RateTea. This post is about another supermarket chain: Trader Joe's. The following picture shows a Trader Joe's that I have visited before, in Media, PA, although this is not the store I regularly shop at. If you've seen me with my hat, the flower (a poppy) in my hat was a gift from a veteran outside this store, after I donated some money. This store was built inside the old Media armory, which also houses the Pennsylvania Veteran's Museum:
Trader Joe's and Wegmans share a few things in common: they are both perceived as relatively high-end supermarket chains, catering to people who like food and want higher-quality products. But the similarities end there. Both the tea selection and the stores as a whole are vastly different.
Trader Joe's Tea:
Tea is not Trader Joe's strong suit. The company does sell its own brand of tea. However, the tea is only available in tea bags, and as tea bags go, I personally find them quite disappointing. If you read reviews of Trader Joe's Tea on RateTea, you'll see that, as of writing this, all of their tea ratings on the site are in the 40-50 range (out of 100). They're not terrible, but no one seems to love them either. There are no single-region teas, and no loose-leaf teas.
Trader Joe's also does not seem to put as much effort into tea as they do coffee. The company has a full four pages on their website about coffee, and not one page on tea. Their coffee offerings are also, in my opinion, clearly superior to their tea offerings: they sell single-origin coffee, including some shade-grown coffee.
I do believe that, with little effort, Trader Joe's could do better. Most of Trader Joe's products are consistently high quality for a relatively low price, and their tea seems to fall outside this pattern: it is average-priced, but strikes me as below-average in quality. Even if they just wanted to stock tea bags, they could stock higher-quality tea bags. Maybe they could throw in an offering or two from Ten Ren Tea, which, in my opinion, offers one of the best quality-to-price ratios among simple tea bags. Even offering just Foojoy tea bags would be a step up in quality (and a step down in price) from what they currently sell. And there are so many great companies out there selling simple tea bags that are better than what Trader Joe's offers, and lower in price. Why not throw some single-region teas in the mix?
If I were running Trader Joe's:
If I were running Trader Joe's, I'd make the following changes:
In short, all Trader Joe's needs to do is to start thinking more about what tea they offer. The offerings now seem to reflect a lack of consideration or focus on this product, like tea is merely an afterthought.
Trader Joe's as a Whole:
While I'm writing on the topic of Trader Joe's, I want to comment on the chain as a whole. I shop here semi-regularly (every couple of months) and there is a lot I like about the store. But there's also a lot that I dislike.
Strengths:
In my opinion, the biggest strength of Trader Joe's is that it has consistently fair prices on products that are consistently above average quality. I think the best products to buy at Trader Joe's are packaged products that you can buy in relatively large quantities. I buy such things at this store as raw nuts, dried fruit, kalamata olives in glass jars, canned smoked herring, and massive bars of 70% dark chocolate. I also buy a fair amount of cheese and chicken sausage at the store.
I also want to mention some strengths of this store, other than the quality of the products: the employees are very courteous, which, according to my friends who have worked at this store, follows naturally from the fact that Trader Joe's treats their employees very well and the store is a pleasant place to work. I also like the no-nonsense pricing -- there are no sales or complex deals, only consistently fair prices. Another benefit of shopping here is that the store keeps enough staff on hand so that lines stay short, even when the store is busy.
Weaknesses:
Trader Joe's produce section is close to what I would consider an epic fail. Nearly all the produce is shipped in from very far away; the chain lags behind even the most "ghetto" supermarkets in terms of its lack of locally-grown or even semi-locally-grown produce. Much of the produce is packaged, and a very large portion of it originates outside the country. Once in a rare while I've picked up a good batch of something or other here, but my experiences, by and large, with the produce have been pretty bad.
Trader Joe's also fails when it comes to the sustainability of their fish offerings (with the exception of the canned fish I mentioned above). There is no fresh fish in the store, only canned fish and frozen, packaged fish, which can be fine, except for the problem that much of what the company sells is among the worst choices available from the perspective of sustainability and health. I use Seafood Watch and EDF's Seafood Selector to guide my choices of what fish to buy, and a large portion of what Trader Joe's stocks is on the "Avoid" or "Eco-Worst" list of these organizations, not to mention that many are also marked as being high in mercury and/or PCB's.
In terms of the store itself, some other downsides of this chain are that the store interiors tend to be cramped and have traffic jams during busy times of day, and that many of the store's parking lots also tend to be cramped. I have also noticed that some of their stores in urban areas have a pedestrian-unfriendly design. For example, there is a Trader Joe's on market street in Philadelphia, but you can only enter from the rear of the building, where the parking lot is--friendly to drivers but unfriendly to walkers or people arriving from the trolley stop.
What do you think?
Do you shop at Trader Joe's? What do you think of their tea offerings? Do you think they could do better? How about the chain as a whole?
Trader Joe's and Wegmans share a few things in common: they are both perceived as relatively high-end supermarket chains, catering to people who like food and want higher-quality products. But the similarities end there. Both the tea selection and the stores as a whole are vastly different.
Trader Joe's Tea:
Tea is not Trader Joe's strong suit. The company does sell its own brand of tea. However, the tea is only available in tea bags, and as tea bags go, I personally find them quite disappointing. If you read reviews of Trader Joe's Tea on RateTea, you'll see that, as of writing this, all of their tea ratings on the site are in the 40-50 range (out of 100). They're not terrible, but no one seems to love them either. There are no single-region teas, and no loose-leaf teas.
Trader Joe's also does not seem to put as much effort into tea as they do coffee. The company has a full four pages on their website about coffee, and not one page on tea. Their coffee offerings are also, in my opinion, clearly superior to their tea offerings: they sell single-origin coffee, including some shade-grown coffee.
I do believe that, with little effort, Trader Joe's could do better. Most of Trader Joe's products are consistently high quality for a relatively low price, and their tea seems to fall outside this pattern: it is average-priced, but strikes me as below-average in quality. Even if they just wanted to stock tea bags, they could stock higher-quality tea bags. Maybe they could throw in an offering or two from Ten Ren Tea, which, in my opinion, offers one of the best quality-to-price ratios among simple tea bags. Even offering just Foojoy tea bags would be a step up in quality (and a step down in price) from what they currently sell. And there are so many great companies out there selling simple tea bags that are better than what Trader Joe's offers, and lower in price. Why not throw some single-region teas in the mix?
If I were running Trader Joe's:
If I were running Trader Joe's, I'd make the following changes:
- Sell finum basket infusers in the tea section, and sell some boxes of loose-leaf tea. I'd search long and hard to find a product offering superior quality at a low price, like the three teas I featured in my post cheap tea: loose-leaf teas offering outstanding value.
- I'd put a big, and cute sign next to the loose-leaf tea for about 6 months after stocking it, saying something to the effect of: "Loose-leaf tea saves money, protects the environment, and is superior in flavor." These are three things that Trader Joe's customers seem to care about, and I think it would probably make the loose-leaf tea sell quickly, even among people who had not ever tried loose-leaf tea before.
- I'd put an equal amount of pages on their website about tea as about coffee. I'd highlight the individual products they offer, and draw attention to the fact that the company was now selling loose-leaf tea, and explain the benefits of loose-leaf tea in terms of price, quality, and sustainability.
- I'd find a new supplier for their private-label brand of tea bags. From what I've tried of them, I don't think their current tea bags compare well to what else is out there, even among low-end tea bags.
- I'd add single-region tea bags, like Darjeeling, Assam, and I'd probably offer some of the most popular Japanese styles of green tea, like hojicha and genmaicha, and maybe some Chinese teas as well, like oolongs and green tea. I know these things exist because I've had decent tea in tea bags for a fair price from brands like Ten Ren Tea, Foojoy, Harney and Sons, and Jacksons of Piccadilly.
In short, all Trader Joe's needs to do is to start thinking more about what tea they offer. The offerings now seem to reflect a lack of consideration or focus on this product, like tea is merely an afterthought.
Trader Joe's as a Whole:
While I'm writing on the topic of Trader Joe's, I want to comment on the chain as a whole. I shop here semi-regularly (every couple of months) and there is a lot I like about the store. But there's also a lot that I dislike.
Strengths:
In my opinion, the biggest strength of Trader Joe's is that it has consistently fair prices on products that are consistently above average quality. I think the best products to buy at Trader Joe's are packaged products that you can buy in relatively large quantities. I buy such things at this store as raw nuts, dried fruit, kalamata olives in glass jars, canned smoked herring, and massive bars of 70% dark chocolate. I also buy a fair amount of cheese and chicken sausage at the store.
I also want to mention some strengths of this store, other than the quality of the products: the employees are very courteous, which, according to my friends who have worked at this store, follows naturally from the fact that Trader Joe's treats their employees very well and the store is a pleasant place to work. I also like the no-nonsense pricing -- there are no sales or complex deals, only consistently fair prices. Another benefit of shopping here is that the store keeps enough staff on hand so that lines stay short, even when the store is busy.
Weaknesses:
Trader Joe's produce section is close to what I would consider an epic fail. Nearly all the produce is shipped in from very far away; the chain lags behind even the most "ghetto" supermarkets in terms of its lack of locally-grown or even semi-locally-grown produce. Much of the produce is packaged, and a very large portion of it originates outside the country. Once in a rare while I've picked up a good batch of something or other here, but my experiences, by and large, with the produce have been pretty bad.
Trader Joe's also fails when it comes to the sustainability of their fish offerings (with the exception of the canned fish I mentioned above). There is no fresh fish in the store, only canned fish and frozen, packaged fish, which can be fine, except for the problem that much of what the company sells is among the worst choices available from the perspective of sustainability and health. I use Seafood Watch and EDF's Seafood Selector to guide my choices of what fish to buy, and a large portion of what Trader Joe's stocks is on the "Avoid" or "Eco-Worst" list of these organizations, not to mention that many are also marked as being high in mercury and/or PCB's.
In terms of the store itself, some other downsides of this chain are that the store interiors tend to be cramped and have traffic jams during busy times of day, and that many of the store's parking lots also tend to be cramped. I have also noticed that some of their stores in urban areas have a pedestrian-unfriendly design. For example, there is a Trader Joe's on market street in Philadelphia, but you can only enter from the rear of the building, where the parking lot is--friendly to drivers but unfriendly to walkers or people arriving from the trolley stop.
What do you think?
Do you shop at Trader Joe's? What do you think of their tea offerings? Do you think they could do better? How about the chain as a whole?
Monday, January 10, 2011
Tea at Wegmans Supermarket
A while back I wrote about tea selections in supermarkets in the U.S. This post highlights a newly-discovered exception to what I wrote in that post.
I have heard things about the outstanding tea selection at Wegmans supermarket for some time, but I don't think I understood the full magnitude or scale of what people meant by saying "Wegmans has a good tea selection." I wish I had brought my camera with me yesterday, for my first trip into a Wegmans, this one located in Cockeysville, MD, but alas, I did not. Instead, you'll have to settle for this backlit photo of one of the bags of loose tea I bought there:
What did I find in Wegmans, and why am I so excited about it?
First of all, there was a whole section of the store dedicated to tea. In the supermarket I visited, it was a sizeable room set in the back of the store, easily as large or larger as some retail tea shops. Two of the walls were lined mostly with tea bags, with a selection that would be unrivalled among any supermarket I've ever set foot in. But there were several things that really excited me.
Teaware: although I did not buy any teaware here, I was excited to see a wide variety of tea pots and tea infusers for sale. But what was even more encouraging was that the teapots and teacups for sale were not strictly from western traditions. There were more of the smaller teapots and teacups associated with tea cultures in southeast Asia, and if anything, significantly less of the western-style teaware.
The small and marginalized coffee section: while I do drink coffee on rare occasions, I'm definitely someone who gets more excited about tea (in case you haven't already noticed), and it was a nice change of pace to see only a small subsection of the tea section with a few varieties of coffee beans for sale. Most big corporate stores in the U.S. seem to have big gourmet coffee selections and negligible, if any, selections of loose tea.
Wegmans store-brand of loose tea: this was absolutely the highlight of the store. Taking up a large section of the back wall of the tea room were four shelves of large metal canisters filled with loose-leaf tea. These, with the exception of the Gyokuro, were left free for the customers to handle. There was a self-serve area with a scale, and some small bags and scoops.
Wegmans Loose Tea Selection:
I was immediately impressed by the selection, pricing, presentation, and freshness of the teas. I was also highly impressed by the way it was presented and stored. The tea was stored properly, in airtight metal containers to keep the light out, and it was presented in such a way that you could both see and smell the loose leaf before buying anything. With a few exceptions, the teas smelled really good, suggesting to me that they're quite high-quality. Some of them were organic.
The selection was great, and balanced. Although there were more flavored teas than I would have preferred, there were teas from a wide variety of styles and regions represented: Darjeeling, Assam, Nilgiri blacks, several Japanese greens, Chinese whites, some Jasmine teas, and quite a few Taiwanese oolongs. The weakness of the selection was Chinese greens: there was a dragon well / long jing, but the color and smell of the leaf did not impress me and I did not feel compelled to sample it. There was a decent gunpowder green, but I did not buy it. I would have appreciated more Chinese greens, especially on the low end of price (chun mee?). By contrast, there were two senchas and both seemed reasonably priced relative to how the aroma and appearance of the dry leaf. The rooibos smelled really good, and was organic and outright bargain-priced: I can't wait to try this one.
Overall, the prices on many of the teas were amazingly low, although the range of prices was wide, ranging from $9/pound for Yerba mate to $200/lb for Gyokuro, with most teas around $20/pound. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the setup was that there was no minimum purchase, enabling me to purchase exactly the quantity I wanted of each tea: enough to sample several times by several different brewing methods, and no more. I purchased nine loose-leaf offerings, including seven pure teas, one Yerba mate, and one rooibos. I have sampled one tea so far, a Tie Guan Yin from Taiwan, and it is quite outstanding for its $54/pound price tag. and I think I look forward to writing reviews and sharing them.
Update: you can now view my reviews of Wegmans teas on RateTea.
I have heard things about the outstanding tea selection at Wegmans supermarket for some time, but I don't think I understood the full magnitude or scale of what people meant by saying "Wegmans has a good tea selection." I wish I had brought my camera with me yesterday, for my first trip into a Wegmans, this one located in Cockeysville, MD, but alas, I did not. Instead, you'll have to settle for this backlit photo of one of the bags of loose tea I bought there:
What did I find in Wegmans, and why am I so excited about it?
First of all, there was a whole section of the store dedicated to tea. In the supermarket I visited, it was a sizeable room set in the back of the store, easily as large or larger as some retail tea shops. Two of the walls were lined mostly with tea bags, with a selection that would be unrivalled among any supermarket I've ever set foot in. But there were several things that really excited me.
Teaware: although I did not buy any teaware here, I was excited to see a wide variety of tea pots and tea infusers for sale. But what was even more encouraging was that the teapots and teacups for sale were not strictly from western traditions. There were more of the smaller teapots and teacups associated with tea cultures in southeast Asia, and if anything, significantly less of the western-style teaware.
The small and marginalized coffee section: while I do drink coffee on rare occasions, I'm definitely someone who gets more excited about tea (in case you haven't already noticed), and it was a nice change of pace to see only a small subsection of the tea section with a few varieties of coffee beans for sale. Most big corporate stores in the U.S. seem to have big gourmet coffee selections and negligible, if any, selections of loose tea.
Wegmans store-brand of loose tea: this was absolutely the highlight of the store. Taking up a large section of the back wall of the tea room were four shelves of large metal canisters filled with loose-leaf tea. These, with the exception of the Gyokuro, were left free for the customers to handle. There was a self-serve area with a scale, and some small bags and scoops.
Wegmans Loose Tea Selection:
I was immediately impressed by the selection, pricing, presentation, and freshness of the teas. I was also highly impressed by the way it was presented and stored. The tea was stored properly, in airtight metal containers to keep the light out, and it was presented in such a way that you could both see and smell the loose leaf before buying anything. With a few exceptions, the teas smelled really good, suggesting to me that they're quite high-quality. Some of them were organic.
The selection was great, and balanced. Although there were more flavored teas than I would have preferred, there were teas from a wide variety of styles and regions represented: Darjeeling, Assam, Nilgiri blacks, several Japanese greens, Chinese whites, some Jasmine teas, and quite a few Taiwanese oolongs. The weakness of the selection was Chinese greens: there was a dragon well / long jing, but the color and smell of the leaf did not impress me and I did not feel compelled to sample it. There was a decent gunpowder green, but I did not buy it. I would have appreciated more Chinese greens, especially on the low end of price (chun mee?). By contrast, there were two senchas and both seemed reasonably priced relative to how the aroma and appearance of the dry leaf. The rooibos smelled really good, and was organic and outright bargain-priced: I can't wait to try this one.
Overall, the prices on many of the teas were amazingly low, although the range of prices was wide, ranging from $9/pound for Yerba mate to $200/lb for Gyokuro, with most teas around $20/pound. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the setup was that there was no minimum purchase, enabling me to purchase exactly the quantity I wanted of each tea: enough to sample several times by several different brewing methods, and no more. I purchased nine loose-leaf offerings, including seven pure teas, one Yerba mate, and one rooibos. I have sampled one tea so far, a Tie Guan Yin from Taiwan, and it is quite outstanding for its $54/pound price tag. and I think I look forward to writing reviews and sharing them.
Update: you can now view my reviews of Wegmans teas on RateTea.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Tea Selections of Supermarkets
Any tea connoisseur knows that supermarkets are not the stronghold of tea culture in the U.S. Many of them sell only one or two loose teas, usually Twinings, although my local Pathmark surprised me when I picked up a loose organic sencha from Two Leaves and a Bud the other day.
But the tea selection of supermarkets does vary greatly from one to the next. Wegmans, a supermarket chain in the mid-Atlanic, has a surprising selection of its own brand of tea, which, from what I've heard from others, is not bad. RateTea lists Wegmans teas, which include loose teas and even a few single-region teas; I have yet to try any of them, but one has received a favorable review on the site.
As someone who cares a lot about "public food culture" in the U.S. (and hopes to influence it), I like to keep an eye on what is for sale in supermarkets, even if I'm not going to shop there. I just want to get a sense on what's going on out there in society, so that I can get a greater sense of how I fit into the picture. Here's what is in my local PathMark:
Doesn't look terribly exciting, right? But note the tea strainers hanging in front of the numerous boxes of teabags from various mainstream brands. They're not the best choice of a tea infuser, in my opinion--I'd rather see a Finum Basket Infuser myself, or something similar--but it's good that they at least sell them. The only loose tea I found in this part of the store was Twinings, and they only had a few varieties, but hidden in the "organic" and "health food" section of the store was the Two Leaves and a Bud tea I mentioned above.
It seems that the retail industry in the U.S. seems to consider tea more of a "health food" item than a mainstream food item. Fitting with this, the Newark Natural Foods Co Op had a bit of a better selection:
Although these are better teas (Brands like Numi, Choice Organics, and a few more esoteric brands), they are almost all tea bags. I found this disappointing. It kind of fits with the whole "whole foods" mentality that I often hear people criticize: people will buy organic and fair-trade certified products, often at higher prices, but they don't get at the core issue--the fact that they're paying for all this packaging, the fact that they're still spending their money on an industrialized food supply. I've even heard people argue that all these organic brands are essentially "greenwashing"...I'm not sure I'd go that far, I do think there's a difference between having the certification and not having it, and that it is probably worth paying for. But I also think it might be better in the interest of sustainability to just buy high-quality loose tea, even if it has no organic or fair trade certification. And I'm not seeing this transition reflected in the offerings of even health food stores...yet.
There's a little bit of good news out there, but we still have a long way to go.
But the tea selection of supermarkets does vary greatly from one to the next. Wegmans, a supermarket chain in the mid-Atlanic, has a surprising selection of its own brand of tea, which, from what I've heard from others, is not bad. RateTea lists Wegmans teas, which include loose teas and even a few single-region teas; I have yet to try any of them, but one has received a favorable review on the site.
As someone who cares a lot about "public food culture" in the U.S. (and hopes to influence it), I like to keep an eye on what is for sale in supermarkets, even if I'm not going to shop there. I just want to get a sense on what's going on out there in society, so that I can get a greater sense of how I fit into the picture. Here's what is in my local PathMark:
Doesn't look terribly exciting, right? But note the tea strainers hanging in front of the numerous boxes of teabags from various mainstream brands. They're not the best choice of a tea infuser, in my opinion--I'd rather see a Finum Basket Infuser myself, or something similar--but it's good that they at least sell them. The only loose tea I found in this part of the store was Twinings, and they only had a few varieties, but hidden in the "organic" and "health food" section of the store was the Two Leaves and a Bud tea I mentioned above.
It seems that the retail industry in the U.S. seems to consider tea more of a "health food" item than a mainstream food item. Fitting with this, the Newark Natural Foods Co Op had a bit of a better selection:
Although these are better teas (Brands like Numi, Choice Organics, and a few more esoteric brands), they are almost all tea bags. I found this disappointing. It kind of fits with the whole "whole foods" mentality that I often hear people criticize: people will buy organic and fair-trade certified products, often at higher prices, but they don't get at the core issue--the fact that they're paying for all this packaging, the fact that they're still spending their money on an industrialized food supply. I've even heard people argue that all these organic brands are essentially "greenwashing"...I'm not sure I'd go that far, I do think there's a difference between having the certification and not having it, and that it is probably worth paying for. But I also think it might be better in the interest of sustainability to just buy high-quality loose tea, even if it has no organic or fair trade certification. And I'm not seeing this transition reflected in the offerings of even health food stores...yet.
There's a little bit of good news out there, but we still have a long way to go.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)